Chapter 38: How was this going to go?; "success";
Safe-house, Mid-town Manhattan, December, 2016
Harold stayed there at his desk after Mr. Reese had come and gone. The rest of the team could work with him at the table in the kitchen; what Harold needed to focus on right now was better done in private here. He looked into the camera eye at the top of his screen and spoke directly to the Machine.
"Personal bio data – subject name Honoré Ulysses Brand."
Data began to scroll until it filled the screen. Harold methodically read through the paragraphs, one at a time, jotting notes to himself in his notebook as he went. The Machine monitored his pupils and adjusted the page as Harold's eyes moved down the screen. The notations that he made in his notebook were also within view of its camera eye.
The Machine read his familiar handwriting - upside down – Harold wrote in small, some might term micro-graphic, block letters similar to those on architectural drawings: clear, precise, unambiguous. And as the Machine noted the information Harold found of interest, it tailored the data it presented in a logical way, so that Harold was able to more quickly build his profile.
H. Ulysses Brand was a resident of Manhattan for years, a fixture in certain circles, with a carefully-groomed professional persona. He'd taken a small fortune left to him and turned it into several billions in personal wealth. His investments in various businesses were worth far more, though. He appeared to live a quiet, humble life, although there'd been some unsubstantiated stories of behavior unbecoming a man of his stature and reputation – stories that had circulated briefly and then were rapidly quashed. He appeared to be well-connected in business, media, and philanthropy circles.
Although he had lived for most of his adult life in Manhattan, he had deep roots in the South as well. His mother's family came from rural Louisiana, thus the first name, Honoré – a nod to his Cajun heritage. His family had descended from former French settlers in Eastern Canada, uprooted from their homes, persecuted by the British, and eventually sent to find a new home in the prairies and bayous of Southern Louisiana. Brand never went by his first name, but included it in naming his companies – some version of HUB this or HUB that filled a portfolio of his businesses.
Ulysses Brand had an impressive career in investment; from a small fortune made in oil and gas, he'd come to own hotels, golf courses, and real estate in some of the most prestigious locations in the U.S. and abroad. He traveled in circles that brought him in close contact with various heads of state all over the world. There were photos of him with leaders in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, South America, and Russia. Mr. Brand had recently parlayed his business success and name recognition into a bid for political office. Considered a long shot, Brand had stunned the pundits, and pulled out a clear victory in the final month of his campaign. Half the country was still buzzing about how the polls could have been so wrong.
And there was another problem. Finch and the Machine had uncovered a paper trail linking Mr. Brand, President-elect Brand, with the Russian owners of the mid-town diner where nothing less than a Spetsnaz intelligence cell had embedded. And the paper trail clearly showed Brand knew.
The Machine clicked through a dozen photos of Mr. Brand – attending events where he was photographed with the Russian father and son. It appeared he had quite a chummy relationship with the pair. However, in the context of hundreds of other photos with high-profile jet setters and glitterati, one could easily overlook the Russian pair.
As Harold and the Machine dug deeper into Mr. Brand, they found secret and more disturbing revelations of deeper financial connections – with Russia, in particular. And there was the story that Mr. Brand had pressured three Greek brothers to sell that mid-town diner, apparently under some kind of duress, and that the brothers had gone missing afterward, only to have it sold to the Russian father and son – all of this unusual and highly disturbing to Harold.
Honoré Ulysses Brand had not only run for high office in the U.S., he had run for the highest office in the U.S. And he was days away from taking the oath as President of the United States. Harold felt a chill as he considered the consequences. He looked up from reading and looked directly into the camera eye to address the Machine.
"We must double- and triple-check everything. We can't afford to be wrong about any of this," he said, almost whispering. Harold's face appeared blank, almost unemotional – and yet the Machine's readings indicated otherwise. Pupillary reaction, muscle tension in the face, neck and shoulders, as well as Harold's skin perfusion changes spoke of far more concern than his external appearance might suggest. The Machine went on to double and triple check its data, and unsurprisingly, nothing changed. Honoré Ulysses Brand, the new President, had evidence of hidden ties to our greatest adversary. Where else would his ties lead? Harold sat back in his seat. How was this going to go?
Down the hall, in the kitchen, Harold's spot was empty. The rest of the team worked on tasks from the list that morning. Gone was the small notebook with the notes Harold had made, the ones he'd meant to follow up on with the team when they'd re-convened. The new revelations had taken Harold far afield. Bigger fish than those a few blocks away had beckoned. And now, it was hard to bring his focus back.
Reese, though, had been there, inside the Russians' office, staring into violent eyes of one of them. It could have gone either way at that moment. But the man had backed down, that time. Reese had the sense that Petrov, the father, was going to be more trouble. And Finch had said that other agencies were monitoring the diner. Who? Who were the Team likely to trip over if push came to shove? When push came to shove. Reese needed more on which agencies were snooping around over there, but there was little he could find on his own. He'd need Harold and the Machine to dig in deeper.
Then there were the men in black, Spetsnaz according to Shaw. How many? How had they gotten here, to Manhattan? Where were they holed up? Were they also the ones in the SUV's the other night – the ones who'd chased Harold and the rest of the team in the van? That made the most sense. They'd hacked Finch's cell phone, even with all the protection he'd been able to apply to the phones as a genius-engineer and security-geek. Reese was impressed – pissed, but impressed. If this Russian cell could succeed at hacking Finch, what else could they do to threaten them? How close were they to finding the Team?
Reese was thinking it might be a good time to move. Get everyone out of this location before something else happened. He was going to make that recommendation to Finch, and in the meantime, he was working on a packing list and an alternative location. He looked up from thinking, and saw Shaw, watching him with calm dark eyes. She leaned forward, toward him, across the table, wincing as her shoulder swayed in the sling.
"So, when are we leaving?" she asked.
Diner, Mid-town, a few blocks from the safe-house
Yana made her way to the next customers, seated in a booth. The diner had been mobbed all day, and it was finally starting to slow down. She pulled her pad from the pocket of her apron, flipped through a few pages, and leaned forward with the pad on the end of their table.
"Vill that be all?" she asked, already adding the numbers on the pad. The couple smiled and nodded. Yana wrote a number in bigger numbers in the lower part of the page, and circled it. Then she tore it off at the top and handed it to the man, deftly exchanging it for a folded paper in his hand. She slid it with her pad into the apron pocket and nodded to the two of them.
"Hyaff a nice day." The two rose, and Gregor put his arm around the waist of the female, giving her a little pinch as she turned her back. She jumped, and then reached back to slap his hand, laughing, as she made her way to the front. Gregor gave a wink to Yana.
She followed behind them and then past them to the alcove near the counter. She stepped a few feet inside, where she wouldn't be seen and fished inside her pocket for the paper Gregor had passed. In his heavy Russian scrawl he'd written "success" with a number next to it. Yana smiled to herself. He must have found a way to clean up the video showing where the Americans had gone, once they'd escaped from their two teams chasing them. She folded the paper and slipped it back in her pocket.
Just then, she heard Andrei calling her name from down the hall. She flipped through her pad, tore off a page and slapped it on the counter of the kitchen window as she passed. Andrei had his eyes on her, and then backed away inside the office. He wasn't looking very happy.
Inside the office, Vasiliy was standing with his back to the door. When he turned around, his face was flushed, as though the two had been arguing. Andrei strutted back to his desk, sitting, then swiveled around to face Yana.
As he started to speak, his father cut him off. "No progress whatsoever finding these Americans who hacked our system, and paid a visit here, right under our noses!" he sneered, sliding his eyes toward his son. Andrei ignored his father and waited for Yana to speak.
"My team has made certain inquiries, and I'm sure this will lead to their location," she said in Russian, in her steady voice. Her eyes and her manner were calm. She had no intention of letting the father get under her skin with his petulant whining. Her team had a job to do, and she would not be side-tracked by this pair of amateurs. She had an address, and her team was on it.
"You'd better be sure that it does, and soon," the father blustered.
Yana regarded him with steady eyes. No hint of her real thoughts. She nodded her head slightly, first to one, then the other, and turned to the door.
A loud bang made her turn. Vasiliy had pounded with his fist on the desk with the monitors on it. The screens jiggled and the pictures faded for a moment. Yana turned again, and the two men watched her walk away, down the hall, to the opening at the kitchen window.